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Reformed Classicalist

Paul's Exhortation to the Christian Citizen: Part 1

RTS Papers / Acts-Romans / Fall 2018

An Exegetical Paper on Romans 13:1-7


13:1-7 is really the formative text in the New Testament on civil authority and proper submission. It is one of the most abused texts in the whole of the Scriptures for fairly obvious reasons. As this will not be a whole exposition of Paul’s doctrine of the earthly magistrate and citizen, this paper will be restricted to the main thrust of the exhortation in the flow of the letter.


Having said that, Paul’s more basic reasons for writing to the Roman church as well as his Old Testament theology of dutiful civic life must form our backdrop. Part of what that context will do for us is to allow the fresh air of other biblical texts on the secular state and civil obedience to give us much needed information. After all, Paul was not intending a full doctrine of civil government or political involvement in this text. He was writing to the church in the capital of the Roman Empire at a moment when both Jews and Christians were mistrusted, and where the church obviously had no political clout. That obvious context is somehow altogether ignored in the prevailing Statist interpretation of our day.


Although the citizen is in Paul’s hortatory scope, it is the magistrate (the object of the citizen’s submission) that winds up being mostly described, so that tracing out these descriptive lines of what the design of civil power is becomes inevitable. Consequently, this essay will be confined to a biblical theological angle on Paul’s doctrine, inquiring what meaning he invests in the concepts such as authority, God’s servant, the sword, and divine judgment-wrath in the civil sphere.

What I will argue is that God has ordained the office of civil magistrate to carry out temporal justice, such that the Christian citizen offers to it a submission that is constant yet not unqualified.

In order to show the true nature of this civil obedience, we will proceed in the following order: (1) the context of Romans as a whole; (2) the structure and grammatical features of 13:1-7; (3) the Old Testament shadows of the dutiful citizen; (4) how this exhortation relates to divine justice in the doctrinal section; (5) how this divine justice exemplified in the civil sphere can function as a motive for Christian submission; (6) parallel texts in the New Testament, and then finally (7) integrating the text with life.


13:1-7 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE EPISTLE AS A WHOLE


Some fairly tedious textual ground clearing does have to come first.


However tempting it may be to show how Christ is the fulfillment of the royal office, this is not something that Paul addresses here, or anywhere else in this letter. It would be more faithful to the context to show how 13:1-7 fits into the overall tone of the hortatory section (12:1-15:13) given the most relevant doctrinal foundations that have come before (1:18-11:36). The words that begin 12:1 not only signal transition from doctrine to exhortation, but indicate that the doctrine expounded by Paul will function in some way as an informing motive for all of the practical instruction to follow. Waters provides an angle on this by referring to 12:1ff as “the moral demands that rest upon those who have received the ‘righteousness of God’ by faith alone” [192]. As to the transition from 12:21 to 13:1, Moo may be correct that this is abrupt, “with no explicit syntactical connection” [790-91]. Granting this, we will still be able to discern a common theme.


If the date proposed by Longenecker, accepted by Waters, is correct (57-58 AD) [171], then Caesar at this point meant Nero. That his persecutions against the Christians of the city was still in the future should not affect our interpretation. Assuming the divine inspiration of Scripture, we infer that God knew that several Roman emperors would commit atrocities against his church, and yet saw fit to include this exhortation in the letter. When comparing the potential reasons for Paul writing the letter, it may seem at first glance that 13:1-7 hardly fits. However the Jew-Gentile tensions may shed some light. The previous emperor Claudius had expelled the Jews from the city in 49 AD for what was conceived as a disturbance over “Chrestus” [171]. At this point there was already precedence for viewing this new sect as antisocial. Thus we cannot overlook that admittance of Jewish believers back into the church, as the edict was rescinded, brought to Paul’s mind the importance of showing that Christians were good citizens.

THE TEXT ITSELF: STRUCTURE AND GRAMMATICAL FEATURES


13:1-7 is a tightly packed argument and is a unity. Several verses are clauses of the sentence in the prior verse. Longenecker sees four divisions which I find compelling: 1. Opening exhortation (1a); 2. Primary theological argument (1b-2); 3. A series of logical and practical supporting arguments (3-5); 4. Specific applications (6-7) [954, 55]. There is a textual variant issue in verse 1. In the majority of MSS we read Πᾶσα ψυχὴ which raises the question of Paul’s emphasis. Why every “soul” rather than every man or all of you? At any rate, in the order first appearing in Papyrus 46, the adjective “all” is connected in the dative plural to the governing authorities: πάσαις ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις. The first is the preferred reading, having the far greater witness in the early tradition.


Barth and Cullmann have argued that the ἐξουσίαις of 13:1 are indeed political rulers, but that the word also points to “angelic powers that stand behind the state” [Ladd, 477]. One difficulty of this position is the resultant logic. Either these angels are: (1) all elect angels; (2) all demons; or (3) some combination thereof. If the first, then all earthly governments are pure extensions of the Kingdom of Christ, even if only in an eschatological sense. If the second, then we would have to agree with Gregory Boyd and others who see all human government and its activities as demonic [21-22].


The third position would at least fit more comfortably into orthodoxy, but seems to lack either exegetical warrant or practical usefulness. Besides, the whole flow of the text following is to exhort Christians to act in a certain way toward these authorities: ways that make no sense if this referred to angels. Therefore our first order of business is to conclude that “authorities” here means earthly, civil magistrates. John Murray recognizes the rationale for Cullman’s argument, focuses on the earthly magistrate meaning, but then never indicates whether we ought to include the angelic reference also [147].


All of this business about what is meant by “authorities” is actually rather important for the whole punchline of the text. Some will argue that the word (or concept) means something like liberties or even that this refers only to a theocratic rule, since it goes on to speak of these magistrates as ministers of God. There are good reasons to reject that, and what we have covered so far is already sufficient. More will be seen to help us dismiss such interpretations.


A second and third inference that must be drawn has to do with the universality of the command: all such citizens to all such magistrates. In the first place, Christian citizens are subject “also to the wicked and unbelievers” [Luther, 179]. In the second place, this must apply to all forms of civil government, and so to all historical circumstances. Both inferences may be drawn from the way Paul states it in the negative: οὐ γὰρ ἔστιν ἐξουσία εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ Θεοῦ. How we understand the sense of the preposition “by” (ὑπὸ) will determine whether we view God’s relation to the man in office as one of decree, or mere permission, or design of the office, or blessing upon what he does: or some combination thereof.


The word for “ministers” (λειτουργοὶ) is different in verse 6 than the two uses in verse 4 (διάκονός). Is there any significance to this? In verse 4 the word is the more common for servant, from which we derive “deacon,” while λειτουργός often has the connotation of religious service [cf. Luke 1:23; Acts 13:2; Rom. 15:16, 27; 2 Cor. 9:12; Phil. 2:17; Heb. 1:7, 14; 8:2; 10:11]. Viewed in this light, Paul’s words in verses 6 and 7 regarding taxes resemble several biblical texts on the compensation for priests: cf. 1 Cor. 9:13. One last structural decision the interpreter must make in the clause “for this reason” (διὰ τοῦτο). Schreiner argues that this is not merely referring back to verse 5: because of conscience--therefore we also pay taxes. It is rather “more likely general and inclusive … pointing both backward and forward” [685].


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